Marian Wilkinson
The Carbon Club: How a Network of Influential Climate Sceptics, Politicians and Business Leaders Fought to Control Australia’s Climate Policy
Allen & Unwin: 2020
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In 2014, the World Heritage Committee signalled that it might place Australia’s Great Barrier Reef on its List of World Heritage in Danger. The Australian government, led at the time by Tony Abbott, responded with horror, not because of what the committee’s concerns suggested about coral health, but at the implications for Australian coal. If the reef were classified as endangered, it feared finance for mining projects might cost more. Rather than reconsider an earlier decision to allow waste dumping in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, the government instead launched a diplomatic mission to prevent the listing.

The incident epitomises the broader narrative told by the journalist Marian Wilkinson in The Carbon Club, a story of how, for decades, Australian politicians have placed the interests of resource companies above any concerns for the planet.

In the 1990s, when the world first debated global warming, a basic dilemma was already apparent. In the long term, Australia—a hot and dry continent—would suffer greatly as the temperature climbed. In the near term, however, it benefited tremendously from the expansion of the fossil fuel economy, exporting more coal than any other nation and selling an array of other carbon-intensive commodities.

Suffice to say, the short-term interests of industry triumphed. As early as the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, both of the country’s major political parties—Liberal (right) and Labor (left)—embraced what became known as the ‘no regrets’ policy: Australia would reduce emissions only if it could do so without any economic consequences.

• Tags: Australia, Issue 22, Jeff Sparrow, Marian Wilkinson